Wow, what a year 2019 was

I've had some pretty interesting years in my life (so far), but 2019 surely has to rank up there with busiest and most productive from a work perspective.

Aside from managing a Digital Strategy, technology and Marketing consultancy for the 12th year.... throughout 2019 I managed to pull together various transport / mobility and data specialists to form the Open Transport initiative. They worked to deliver two draft API specifications, one a transport account data interoperability standard and the other the design for a centralised transport operator information look-up (a directory service, giving the URL of each transport / mobility provider’s account API).

On the 3rd January 2020, following a wide-reaching peer review and feedback period, these specifications are now due to become ratified Open Standards and made publicly available. Thus, allowing the transportation and mobility industry to freely use them without conditions.
Yes.... I know. I am giving away a load of intellectual property that I've built up over many months of work from different subject-matter-experts... but the industry needs it (well, it actually needed it many years ago, but nobody ever got around to doing the work).

This work is available here (https://opentransport.co.uk) 

The aim of the initiative is that over time every transport authority (central and local government), transport operating company and their software vendors all recognise the customer value that this openness brings to the entire transport industry and therefore implements it at early as is feasibly possible….and possibly before it becomes legalisation.

My personal thanks goes out to all those who have helped. 

Developing Open Transport isn't about the the technology

I have been pretty involved in the creation of the Open Transport Initiative. A project, along with some very clever folk in the transport industry, to create a new interoperability open standard for transport / mobility accounts.

It has been personally rewarding (so far) and on 14 October we launched a near-finalised version of the customer account specification for peer review & feedback.

Several people have commented that this is a pretty significant technology, which (assuming it is adopted across the transport industry) could provide a similar level of integration and openness as Open Banking has provided to the Financial Services industry.

But the reason for creating this Open Standard and giving it away (eventually) isn't to show how technically proficient I and those around me are. It is to meet a growing need that has been identified... that a customer's transport data such as: purchases, usage and concessions is locked away in an account for each mode of transport.

Steve Jobs once famously remarked 'You've got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology.' and this is what we have done.